Building Cinematic Automotive Stories Through AI WITH SEREN DALGIC

Seren Dalgic, known online as Mintcreatif, is a CMF designer working within the automotive industry. Her work explores the relationship between materials, surfaces, emotion, and sensory perception. Over time, her role evolved beyond material definition into shaping the conceptual direction and emotional identity of projects.

What began as part of her design process gradually turned into an independent creative practice focused on storytelling through automotive imagery and film.

Today, Seren approaches cars as narrative objects. Rather than presenting a vehicle in a conventional way, she builds fictional worlds, atmospheres, and emotional contexts around them - transforming static products into cinematic experiences that feel closer to short films than advertisements.

For her, the most meaningful part of the process is changing the way people emotionally connect with a car they may already know. Through a different visual language and creative direction, the object begins to feel unfamiliar again - more personal, more human, and more emotionally charged.

Her process often begins with a simple question:

What if a car could be presented in a way that awakens a completely different emotion?

From there, the research phase starts. Seren draws inspiration from forgotten cultural references, traditional aesthetics, cinema, contemporary art, photography, and printed media. Sometimes the initial trigger is unexpectedly small - an old image, a texture, a conversation, or a scene from a film - but these fragments often become the foundation of the strongest concepts.

A key part of her storytelling process comes from imagining how a product would be described if people spoke about it honestly and without restraint. This idea shapes the emotional tone of many of her films and voiceovers, where internal thoughts, fragmented conversations, and raw observations become part of the narrative itself.

Instead of treating the product as distant or idealized, her work attempts to make it feel exposed, emotional, and deeply human.

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Seren Dalgic’s AI Workflow

1. Starting With Emotion

Every project begins with a feeling, memory, atmosphere, or visual impulse. This first emotional reference becomes the foundation of the entire concept.

2. Building a Storyboard

Before generating visuals, Seren creates a loose storyboard to define the sequence, pacing, and emotional rhythm of the film. The goal is not perfection, but clarity in direction.

3. Collecting References

References are gathered from platforms like Pinterest and Cosmos, focusing on lighting, textures, framing, environments, and cinematic mood.

4. Generating Scenes in Higgsfield

Using the storyboard and references as guidance, scenes are generated inside Higgsfield. Seren notes that Nano Banana Pro currently delivers some of the strongest results for achieving realistic yet artistic imagery.

5. Refining in Photoshop

The generated visuals are then refined in Photoshop, where color harmony, material consistency, and smaller visual details are adjusted to strengthen the overall atmosphere.

While optional, this step plays a major role in elevating the final quality and cohesion of the project.

6. Animating the Visuals

The refined images are brought back into Higgsfield for animation. Seren primarily uses Seedance for cinematic motion generation, building scene-by-scene instructions to control movement and pacing.

For more detailed control and improved credit efficiency, Kling 3 is also part of the workflow, especially when animating frames individually.

7. Sound Design and Final Edit

The final stage happens inside CapCut or DaVinci Resolve, where sound effects, pacing, music, voiceovers, and final edits come together.

For sound design, AI voiceovers, and music, Seren uses Artlist as part of the finishing process.

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More than a technical workflow, Seren’s process reflects a broader shift happening across creative industries - where AI becomes less about automation and more about extending storytelling, emotion, and creative direction into new forms.